Online IR system evaluation: online databases versus Web search engines

This study evaluated two different types of online information retrieval (IR) systems: online databases and Web search engines, in terms of user generated criteria. It also compares four types of Web search engines: directories, search engines, meta‐search engines, and specialized search engines. The results show that three elements are essential to users in the evaluation of online IR systems: interface design, system performance and collection coverage. While participants preferred the ease of use and intuitive interfaces of Web search engines, they also liked the credible and useful information offered by online databases. Based on the discussion of advantages and problems of online databases and Web search engines, implications of for the design of IR systems are further suggested.

[1]  Susan Feldman,et al.  The Internet Search-Off. , 1998 .

[2]  Hao-hua Chu,et al.  Search En-gines for the World Wide Web: A Compara-tive Study and Evaluation Methodology , 1996 .

[3]  Candy Schwartz,et al.  Web Search Engines , 1998, J. Am. Soc. Inf. Sci..

[4]  Bernard J. Jansen,et al.  A review of Web searching studies and a framework for future research , 2001, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[5]  Peter Willett,et al.  Estimating the recall performance of Web search engines , 1997 .

[6]  Hong Xie,et al.  Traditional IR for web users: a context for general audience digital libraries , 2002, Inf. Process. Manag..

[7]  Amanda Spink,et al.  Searching the Web: the public and their queries , 2001 .

[8]  Ran Hock.  A New Era of Search Engines: Not Just Web Pages Anymore. , 2002 .

[9]  Marek Sroka.  Web Search Engines for Polish Information Retrieval: Questions of Search Capabilities and Retrieval Performance , 2000 .

[10]  Gary Marchionini,et al.  A Comparative Study of Web Search Service Performance , 1996 .

[11]  Hsinchun Chen,et al.  MetaSpider: Meta-searching and categorization on the Web , 2001, J. Assoc. Inf. Sci. Technol..

[12]  Hong Xie,et al.  Supporting ease-of-use and user control: desired features and structure of Web-based online IR systems , 2003, Inf. Process. Manag..

[13]  Monika Henzinger,et al.  Analysis of a very large web search engine query log , 1999, SIGF.

[14]  Amanda Spink,et al.  A user-centered approach to evaluating human interaction with Web search engines: an exploratory study , 2002, Inf. Process. Manag..